Brocade Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2012 Earnings

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/19/12 -- Brocade® (NASDAQ: BRCD) today reported financial results for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2012 ended October 27, 2012. Brocade reported record fourth quarter revenue of $578 million, representing an increase of 5% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. Revenue for fiscal year 2012 was $2,238 million, a record for the company, up 4% year-over-year. The resulting GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) was $0.11 for Q4 and $0.41 for fiscal 2012, on record annual net income of $195 million. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.17 for Q4, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year EPS growth, and $0.66 for the year.

"Q4 was an excellent quarter for Brocade and a strong ending for fiscal year 2012 during which we established a number of company records including revenue, net income, and operating cash flow," said Michael Klayko, CEO of Brocade. "Our product portfolio across all areas of our business is the strongest it has ever been and we are driving industry transformation in emerging areas of growth including virtualized data centers, cloud computing, and software-defined networking. We believe Brocade is well-positioned for continued growth in fiscal 2013."

Summary of Q4 and fiscal 2012 results:

Q4 2012 Storage Area Networking (SAN) business revenue, including products and services, was $394 million, up 9% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. SAN product revenue increased 12% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter, in a seasonally strong quarter for the Company. Brocade's 16 Gbps Fibre Channel products represented nearly 35% of director and switch revenue in the quarter. Fiscal 2012 SAN business revenue was $1,578 million, up 7% year-over-year.

Q4 2012 IP Networking business revenue, including products and services, was $184 million, down 3% year-over-year and up 4% quarter-over-quarter. Ethernet switch revenue was up 5% year-over-year and 1% quarter-over-quarter, while routing revenue was down 10% year-over-year and up 9% quarter-over-quarter. From a customer standpoint, Federal and Service Provider revenues were both up sequentially, while Enterprise revenue was lower. Fiscal 2012 IP Networking business revenue was $659 million, down slightly year-over-year.

Q4 2012 GAAP gross margin was 62.4% and non-GAAP gross margin was 64.8%, compared with 59.5% and 62.9% in Q4 2011, respectively. The year-over-year improvement in gross margin was due to higher revenue, favorable product mix, and lower fixed costs. Fiscal 2012 GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin improved to 61.8% and 64.5%, respectively, compared with 59.8% and 62.5% in fiscal 2011, due to higher revenue and favorable product mix.

GAAP operating margin was 14.9% and non-GAAP operating margin was 22.5% in Q4 2012, compared with 9.9% and 21.0% in Q4 2011, respectively. Operating margin expanded both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter on higher revenue and improved gross margin. Fiscal 2012 GAAP operating margin was 12.4% and non-GAAP operating margin was 20.5%, compared with 8.3% and 17.6% in fiscal 2011, respectively. The improvement in operating margin for the full year was a result of higher gross margin and lower operating expenses as a percentage of revenue.

Fiscal 2012 GAAP EPS of $0.41 was up 310% year-over-year on net income of $195 million, up more than 280% year-over-year. Fiscal 2012 non-GAAP EPS of $0.66 was up 33% year-over-year on non-GAAP net income of $311 million, up 26% year-over-year.

Average diluted shares outstanding for Q4 2012 were lower by 11.7 million from Q4 2011, principally from share repurchases during the past year, including 11.2 million shares ($60 million) repurchased during Q4 2012.

Operating cash flow was $210 million in Q4 2012 and $591 million in fiscal 2012, both records. During the quarter, the Company paid the remaining $30 million of its term loan and ended the year with a cash balance of $713 million and cash, net of debt, of $108 million.

Brocade management will host a conference call today at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 p.m. ET) to discuss fiscal fourth quarter and full year results, as well as a fiscal first quarter 2013 outlook. To access the webcast please go to www.brcd.com/events.cfm. A replay of the conference call and the prepared comments and slides will be available at www.brcd.com.

Management believes that non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release allow management to gain a better understanding of Brocade's comparative operating performance both from period to period, and to its competitors' operating results. Management also believes these non-GAAP financial measures help indicate Brocade's baseline performance before gains, losses or charges that are considered by management to be outside ongoing operating results. Accordingly, management uses these non-GAAP financial measures for planning and forecasting of future periods and in making decisions regarding operations performance and the allocation of resources. Management believes these non-GAAP financial measures, when read in conjunction with Brocade's GAAP financials, provide useful information to investors by offering:

the ability to make more meaningful period-to-period comparisons of Brocade's ongoing operating results;

the ability to make more meaningful comparisons of Brocade's operating performance against industry and competitor companies;

the ability to better identify trends in Brocade's underlying business and to perform related trend analysis;

a better understanding of how management plans and measures Brocade's underlying business; and

an easier way to compare Brocade's most recent results of operations against investor and analyst financial models.

Management excludes certain gains or losses and benefits or costs in determining non-GAAP net income that are the result of infrequent events or arise outside the ordinary course of Brocade's continuing operations. Management believes that it is appropriate to evaluate Brocade's operating performance by excluding those items that are not indicative of ongoing operating results or limit comparability. Such items include: (i) provision or benefit from certain pre-acquisition litigation (ii) legal fees associated with certain pre-acquisition litigation, (iii) legal fees associated with indemnification obligations and other related costs, net, (iv) acquisition and integration costs, (v) loss on sale of property, (vi) interest expense related to the adoption of new standards relating to convertible debt instruments, (vii) original issue discount and debt issuance costs of debt related to lenders that did not participate in refinancing, and (viii) loss on sale of a subsidiary.

Management also excludes the following non-cash charges in determining non-GAAP net income (i) stock-based compensation expense and (ii) amortization of purchased intangible assets. Because of varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types, management believes that the exclusion of stock-based compensation allows for more accurate comparisons of our operating results to our peer companies. Management believes that the expense associated with the amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets is appropriate to be excluded because a significant portion of the purchase price for acquisitions may be allocated to intangible assets that have short lives and exclusion of the amortization expense allows comparisons of operating results that are consistent over time for Brocade's newly acquired and long-held businesses.

Finally, management believes that it is appropriate to exclude the tax effects of the items noted above in order to present a more meaningful measure of non-GAAP net income.

Limitations These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations, however, because they do not include all items of income and expense that impact the Company. Management compensates for these limitations by also considering Brocade's GAAP results. The non-GAAP financial measures that Brocade uses are not prepared in accordance with, and should not be considered an alternative to measurements required by GAAP, such as operating income, net income and net income per share, and should not be considered measurements of Brocade's liquidity. The presentation of this additional information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. In addition, these non-GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similar measurements reported by other companies.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains statements that are forward-looking in nature, including statements regarding Brocade's future financial performance. These statements are based on current expectations on the date of this press release and involve a number of risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ significantly from such estimates. The risks include, but are not limited to, changes in IT spending levels in one or more of our target markets, including the government sector, Brocade's ability to capitalize on new Brocade sales and marketing initiatives, including expanded go-to-market activities in our IP Networking business, customer acceptance of Brocade's Ethernet fabric solutions, Brocade's ability to continue to successfully innovate new products and services on a timely basis and achieve widespread market acceptance, and the effect of increasing market competition and changes in the industry. Certain of these and other risks are set forth in more detail in our Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 28, 2012 and in "Item 1A. Risk Factors" in Brocade's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 29, 2011. Brocade does not assume any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as the result of new developments or otherwise.

About Brocade

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) is the pure-play networking company that innovates to make high-performance networks easier to deploy, manage, and scale in the most demanding environments.

ADX, Brocade, Brocade Assurance, Brocade One, the B-wing symbol, DCX, Fabric OS, ICX, MLX, MyBrocade, SAN Health, VCS, and VDX are registered trademarks, and AnyIO, HyperEdge, NET Health, OpenScript, and The Effortless Network are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands, products, or service names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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